The present disclosure relates to golf teaching devices. More particularly, it relates to portable, simple teaching aides for identifying user foot placement and/or ball placement in performing a variety of different golf shots.
Golf is an immensely popular sport, enjoyed by countless people worldwide. While most golfers profess to play simply for fun, virtually all participants, from beginners to experts, are constantly seeking to improve their game. To this end, the sport's basic equipment (e.g., clubs, balls, shoes, etc.) can play an important role in lowering a golfer's score; in fact, it is commonplace for an avid golfer to annually purchase the most recently devised equipment offerings. However, the golf swing itself is the primary source of improved play. The numerous variables associated with the fundamental golf swing render it an exceedingly difficult athletic endeavor to master, especially for beginning golfers and those of intermediate skill.
In light of the above, golfers invest countless hours practicing their swing. The assistance of a teaching professional is an invaluable resource in achieving swing improvement. As might be expected, however, advice given by a golf instructor may be forgotten or inaccurately recalled when the student later practices or plays. This is fairly common problem for less experienced golfers whom are otherwise attempting to remember and practice a fairly large number of golf swing skill sub-sets (e.g., club selection, grip, stance, ball placement, swing path, weight distribution and shift, etc.).
To purportedly facilitate a golfer's ability to “learn” the proper golf swing outside of the presence of a personal instructor, a plethora of different golf teaching aides have been devised. Many are mechanical in nature, worn or otherwise attached to the golfer's body; while potentially helpful, these mechanisms are expensive, can be uncomfortable at best to use, and do not provide the user with any visual clues that can be applied when the device is removed.
An alternative golf instructional aide takes the basic form of a mat and presents printed words, numbers and/or pictures or drawings. The user is instructed to stand on or near the mat, with the printed indicia advising the user on a number of the different golf swing topics, including club selection, ball placement, foot placement, target path, swing path, hand path, etc., to name but a few. Examples of mat-type golf instructional aides are provided in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,306,111; 5,645,494; 6,482,102; 7,131,910; 7,144,339; and 7,186,184. While beneficial, these and other golf teaching mats have the marked drawback of being too complicated for many golfers, especially beginners. That is to say, in an effort to address as many swing components as possible, most available instructional mats are characterized by numerous words, numbers, pictures, arrows, and grid patterns that, taken in combination, are difficult, at best, for a user to readily comprehend. Further, where numerous shot or club strategies are being addressed by a single teaching mat (e.g., the mat instructions can describe or illustrate different stances, swing paths, ball placements, etc., for short iron shots, long iron shots, drives, and putts), it is virtually impossible for the user to quickly discern the desired correlation between the disparate instructional indicia.
An additional drawback associated with conventional mat-type golf swing teaching aides is that while normally portable, they are essentially useless apart from a practice scenario. For example, many golf teaching mats are formed of a somewhat flexible material, and so can be rolled up when not being used. When the user wants to practice his/her golf swing, the user takes the rolled mat with them to the practice location (e.g., a driving range) and then un-rolls the mat. However, even in rolled form, conventional golf teaching mats are still relatively bulky, and so cannot be conveniently carried by the user, such as with the user's golf bag.
In light of the above, a need exists for a golf teaching device that is highly portable, and provides basic, visually correlated instructional information in a relatively minimalistic format.